Small Wars Journal

Unconventional Warfare Does Not Belong to Special Forces

Mon, 08/12/2013 - 8:38am

Unconventional Warfare Does Not Belong to Special Forces by Dave Maxwell, War on the Rocks.

“US Army Special Forces is the only force in the Department of Defense organized, trained, equipped, educated, and optimized for the conduct of unconventional warfare.”

I have written those words many times in the past thirty plus years of my military service.  With those words I have implied that the unconventional warfare mission belongs solely to US Army Special Forces (SF).  I was wrong.

I began to realize this in 2009, when I participated in a working group established by the US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School to re-examine the definition of unconventional warfare…

Read on.